“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity,” the less obnoxious, more humanoid social media tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads.  “Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead. If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me.  Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

An app launched in July called Text with Jesus lets the user have text conversations with biblical figures including The Son of the Big Man–and I don’t mean Don Jr.–Himself, but the underlying power responding is far more earthly.

Per the Washington Post, Los Angeles-based Catloaf Software uses ChatGPT as the AI behind Jesus and other biblical figures, allowing people who proclaim their faith in Christ have their faith moved by a manmade for-profit scheme.

Company CEO Stéphane Peter, who developed the app himself, described how he manipulates the software to play God, saying the AI was told to study the Bible and other literature, plus text messaging styles and culture.  “We stir the AI and tell it: You are Jesus, or you are Moses, or whoever, and knowing what you already have in your database, you respond to the questions based on their characters.”

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis paid near $50 per head to an influential Iowa Christian leader to organize a recent forum for GOP candidates in the state that attracted 2,000 voters, an usually large sum to pay to sponsor a forum in the key campaign state, Reuters reports.

Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the Family Leader Foundation, not only defended the $95,000 collected by DeSantis and his PAC, he lamented that he wasn’t making enough off the forum, held July 14th. The cost to the campaign was “not even close to exorbitant [to the campaign]. … My only regret is that we probably should have charged more,” he said.

Iowa’s position as an important early Republican showcase gives so-called evangelicals an opportunity to bilk voters to spend money.  While the Family Leader Foundation extort money from campaigns, another group, Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition, makes money coming and going:  not only do they charge sponsors like candidates PACs up to $5,000 for favorable promotion, they also charge voters $75 per ticket to hear the candidates speak.

Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin notes that Democrats will soon release a report on the entire extent of the foreign money that went into the pockets of Trump family and/or administration officials during Trump’s term in the White House and in the ensuing years. Rasking says he’s been pushing Comer to stop with the partisan grandstanding regarding Hunter Biden and to broaden the scope of the issue, given that Trump has received an undisclosed amount directly from the Saudis for hosting gold tournaments at his sub-par clubs; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudi royal family months after leaving office; his wife, Ivanka, received dozens of Chinese trademarks while working in the office; and the Trump family netted tens of millions from property deals and hotel fees from foreign entities that were never disclosed (though Trump promised he would give all foreign-generated proceeds to the Treasury Department).

On a side note, it’s nice to see Raskin recovering from his fight against cancer.  Under his bandana, you can see the re-emergence of hair, an indicator his well on his way to coming back from the chemo and/or radiation he received.

Asked by Fox Corp’s gullible, deluded and dishonest host Maria Bartiromo about his thoughts on David Weiss, the newly-named Special Counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation whom Cruz voted to confirm in 2018, Texas Republican Senator–and the man who personified the adage “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” as he fled to Cancun while other did the hard work of fixing a powerless Texas–Ted Cruz responds:

CNN reports Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office has obtained verified texts and emails from members of Donald Trump’s legal team linking them to a 2021 breach of voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, an indication that the effort to overturn the 2020 election results reached beyond local efforts and possible proof that the fake electors scheme was directed from Trump and/or the close circle of advisers that surrounded him, supporting his effort to undermine the Constitution.

The report indicates the attempted breach was before an effort led by Sidney “The Kraken” Powell to alter voting results in the days after the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, including a plan that led to Cathy Latham, then-chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, seen on security camera footage escorting Trump-allied “investigators” into county offices to examine the machines without supervision.

Derek Lyons, a White House aide during the Trump administration, testified before the House January 6th Committee that Trump’s transition disruption team met at the White House weeks before January 6th and discussed how to get their hands on Georgia voting machines.  While some people claimed Trump had the authority as president to seize the machines–he did not–Rudy Giuliani said the campaign would gain access to the information through different means; Lyons did not specify the means, but the committee later aired security cam footage of Latham greeting Trump-supporting election deniers into Coffee County offices.

“[The special counsel appointment] is just another reflection of the true independence of this Department of Justice.  A Trump-appointed US Attorney is investigating the President’s son,” New York Democrat Dan Goldman declares.  “That is pretty remarkable, and you don’t hear from the other side a respect for the fact that Joe Biden has stayed out of this investigation, and so I defer to Merrick Garland and David Weiss. If Hunter Biden has committed crimes, he should be charged with them.  I’m a Democrat saying that.  You don’t hear any currently elected Republicans saying that if Donald Trump committed crimes, he should be charged with them and held accountable.  And that’s a critical distinction that the public needs to understand.”

Goldman’s point is key to the current political situation:  No Democrat has protested either the investigation or the appointment of a special counsel to look into allegations of misdeeds by Hunter Biden.  There has been no Democratic politicians claiming “witch hunt” or persecution.  As the true Party of “law and order,” Democrats are allowing the Constitutional system of justice to play out, not demanding a termination of the investigation for fear of what it will find.

A long New York Times piece on the changes to the Republican presidential primary polling, fundraising, and right wing media landscapes while disgraced former President Trump was charged with a total of 78 felonies includes this gem of a quote from Florida MAGA cultist Mallory Butler:

“Any time you have a pack of dogs chasing you down and you’re willing to stand firm and fight, you’re going to get my vote. DeSantis doesn’t have a pack of dogs hunting him down, and that tells me that somebody’s probably backing him, or he’s in somebody’s pocket at this point. And Trump doesn’t have that,” said the woman who, again we must emphasize, lives in Florida and almost certainly voted for Ron DeSantis at least once, probably twice, and now thinks her state’s governor is “in somebody’s pocket” simply because he doesn’t face any criminal charges (at this point).

Another Trump fan told the Times something almost as stupid: “The indictments are honestly making my support even stronger. They’ve weaponized our entire government against people like us. Every time he gets indicted, it’s driving tens of thousands more of us to the polls,” said Kentuckian Sheri Hardy Candeni, offering no evidence of “tens of thousands” of new Trump voters being driven “to the polls” that haven’t even happened yet because the first primary election isn’t until early next year. Does she mean more of them are answering calls from pollsters or something? What the fuck?

A third, self-described “reluctant” Trump voter said he’s going out of his way to avoid the details of the charges. “The indictments have no impact on my support for Trump,” said Washington stater Sean Roh. “In the past I’d followed them in the news, but now I don’t care to read the details.”

Capitol insurrectionists in the justice system are excited that the guy who had two weeks to pardon them but didn’t is facing similar charges they do for attempting to overthrow American democracy on January 6, 2021, the Washington Post reports. “We’re like, if Trump comes in here, we’re gonna put him in 45 cell,” said rioter Shane Jenkins, convicted in March of Corruptly Obstructing an Official Proceeding of Congress – one of the same charges Donald faces – and still awaiting sentencing in the MAGA block of the DC Correctional Facility. “We definitely talk about Donald Trump. I don’t think they’ll ever put him in jail, per se. And if they do, I hope they would bring him here.”

“We would have a good time, and it would be awesome to get to meet Donald Trump,” Jenkins continued and Jesus freaking Christ lol this asshole really fucking thinks Trump would be happy to be incarcerated with the losers whose lives he destroyed by inciting them to attack the Capitol.

At least 93 people have been confirmed dead in the horrific inferno that struck the historic town of Lahaina, Hawaii last week, making it the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century, surpassing the 2018 Paradise, California blaze that killed 85, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports.

As many as 1,500 people remain unaccounted for, but God willing the “missing” are simply scattered in shelters and what not rather than having been burned up in the conflagration.

Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss as special counsel because he knows Weiss will protect Hunter.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 12, 2023

Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson texted his staff on August 3rd telling his staff that he would miss the next day of work because he had just shot his wife, USA Today reports.  “I just lost it. I just shot my wife. I won’t be in tomorrow. I will be in custody. I’m so sorry,” Ferguson texted his staff, according to documents presented in his arraignment Friday.

Freed on $1 million bail, court officers are looking for additional public safety guarantees after officers found 47 firearms and more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition in his Anaheim home.  All the guns were properly registered–including the gun that Ferguson used to shoot his wife in a drunken rage–but one gun registered to Ferguson was missing.

Ferguson shot his wife after he pantimimed shooting her using his fingers and she reported said something like, “Why don’t you point a real gun at me?” to her drunken husband.  He pulled a gun from an ankle holster and shot her, killing her.

The Arkansas Department of Education on Friday sent notice to the public school districts in the state that are offering AP African American Studies courses that the state will no longer pay for students to take the course, former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob reports, adding that the state will continue to fund the European History course (because Europeans are white, duh).

A Florida Democrat who lost his House seat after a Republican-gerrymandered map erased his Congressional district could return to Washington under an agreement between a voting rights group led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and the state, Politico reports.

The gerrymandered map led to the GOP picking up four House seats, but it was widely viewed as being unconstitutional due to the way it intentionally reduced the political power of specific groups like Democrats and minorities in Florida.  One of those newly-unrecognizable districts was Al Lawson’s 5th Congressional seat.

The agreement between the National Redistricting Foundation and the state of Florida acknowledges that “none of the enacted districts in North Florida are districts in which Black voters have the ability to elect their preferred candidates.”  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis justified the radical Congressional map in 2021 by claiming racism, saying the districts were previously drawn to benefit people based on their race. 

Far-right antigovernment terrorist Ammon Bundy was arrested Friday night on an outstanding warrant while he attended his son’s football fundraising banquet in Idaho, the Daily Beast reports.  The warrant was filed after Bundy ignored a number of court summons to appear as part of a defamation suit Bundy lost by default, with the jury awarding St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise more than $52 million.

Bundy was arrested by Gem County deputies for the warrant, issued by neighboring Ada and held on $10,000 bond.  While he was being processed at the Gem County jail, a group of protestors, numbering barely in the double digits, protested outside demanded he be freed.  He was, eventually, when he made bail.

Damar Hamlin, the professional football player who collapsed on the field in January after his heart stopped when he was hit in the chest during a tackle, returned to the football field wearing #3 Saturday for a preseason game pitting his Buffalo Bills against the Indianapolis Colts.  Hamlin saw the field during the match up, including making a fourth down stop in the first quarter.

I've just received a call from District Attoney Fani Willis' office. I have been asked to come to court Tuesday for testimony before the grand jury.

— George Chidi (@neonflag) August 12, 2023

A Fulton County, Georgia grand jury will begin hearing evidence next week from District Attorney Fani Willis regarding efforts led by then-President Donald Trump and others to undermine Georgia voters’ choices in the 2020 presidential election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Willis is expected to start presenting evidence on Monday.  Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and independent journalist George Chidi have confirmed that they’ve been given notice to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday; Chidi entered a meeting at the Georgia capitol on December 14th, 2020 where the fake Republican electors gathered to sign their forged document.  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told a local news outlet he had not yet heard from the Fulton County DA recently.

“So when other candidates came here, they had, like, six people,” indicted felon still in the GOP nomination race Donald Trump tells a crowd of cultists at a fair in Iowa in his typical lying dick-measuring contest.  “We have, like, thousands.  [garbled] … stopped at three different places.  We’ve, uh, never been treated so well.  You know we got Iowa–you know this–[something] from China.  Twenty-eight billion.  Nobody else got you ten cents.”

The reality of Trump’s claim is, obviously, dubious.  What he may be discussing is the agricultural aid funds his administration had to spend to bailout farmers who were adversely impacted by Trump’s own trade wars.  His first bailout was a $12 billion handout in July 2018; it was followed up with an additional $16 billion in May 2019.

Alabama’s GOP coach in the Senate Tommy Tuberville has surpassed 300 flag and senior US military officers whose promotions he’s blocking in a protest of the Pentagon policy of paying for travel expenses of members of the military and their families who need to travel to get a safe abortion.  According to the Washington Post–which created a great graphic to illustrate the backlog here–Tuberville is currently blocking promotions to fill key Pentagon positions, not including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commandant of the Marines, and the chief of staff of the Army.

Coach Tuberville–who refuses to instruct his staff to call him by his proper title, Senator–is upset that the military policy on travel reimbursements for health care covers abortion, and he’s willing to jeopardize US military readiness and national security while he stomps his feet.  The policy Tuberville wants eliminated ensures US military receive premium healthcare when they are assigned to underdeveloped nations, religious autocracies or primitive states where regimes ban accepted medical practices because of local oppression, like the Middle East, communist countries, and Alabama.